I haven't touched a keyboard since the last time I had my main keyboard hooked up to my desktop PC. .. and I haven't had a desktop PC for about 5 years.
And even then, I was barely a competent player in the slightest.
To suggest I'm not a keyboardist is a bit of an understatement.

But I've been thinking about getting one of these for quite a while, for a number of reasons.
First, it'd allow for a little more "personality" in my ALChoons.
Second, it'd be good practice. I could really do with some kind of performance-based skill!
And third, if I lug my huge Casio out, I need a plug for the Casio, a midi lead, a midi to USB device and a USB to Lightning connector..
It's not exactly "lie in bed, grab keyboard, play" methodology!

So, yesterday I ordered one.

Size

I grabbed the microKEY Air 25, which has just over 2 octaves of keys, and fits snugly enough in front of the iPad. If I'd've gone for a larger size, it probably would've been a little unweildly. This is a nice fit for bed-based Choonage.

The device is rather weighty for what it is. Feels about 2.5 times the weight of the iPad Air 2, and length wise is about 1.5 times as wide.
Keys are "comfortable" sized. Not as teensy as my oldskool childhood Casio toy keyboard (which I was expecting). They're a nice midsize between that and a full-size key.
Each key has a nice amount of travel, and give a decent amount of velocity data when played.

Joystick

The little joystick on the left of the board lets you use it for all manner of things. You need to open a tweak utility in Windows, change the setting to whatever midi parameters you'd like the joystick to send, then save the parameters to the keyboard.
I initially found it to be muting my audio if I touched it.. not sure what that was about, so I had to disable it.. now it simply acts as a pitch bend.
The smoothness on the little analogue joystick isn't great, from a "used to joypad thumbsticks" point of view. It's a bit "too" springy towards the centre, so requires a little force before it moves, at which point you've overshot the target and it's fllnged to full!!

Function Buttons

There's four extra buttons on the device. Two for moving up and down an octave at a time, which is handy. This means you get the full midi range, even though you only have 25 keys.
After that is a sustain button.. Although you need to hold the button down to use it, it does it's job well enough.
There's also an Arpeggiator button, but that seems fairly redundant when you consider that Gadget already does a lot of handy stuff, especially when using the Kingston gadget.

Connection

To hook it up to the PC, for setting tweaks, you connect a USB cable.
For the iPad, however, you pop in a couple of AA batteries, switch on Bluetooth mode (physical switch on the side), and boot up a compatible app. (I think just KORG apps.. not sure.. haven't got anything else at hand to try it!!)
The app handles connectivity, rather than iOS.
Once connected (relatively painless, simply click the connect button!) you're good to go.
To disconnect, simply toggle the physical switch on the keyboard to disable Bluetooth, and you're done.

Usage

So.. how is it in use?
It's alright!
I need to learn to hammer the keys, or at the very least go back afterwards and reset all the recorded velocities!
Lag-wise, I'm not really noticing anything bad. With the Bluetooth ZX Spectrum keyboard, lag was noticeable, but here it's all but hidden, which is great.

Over the coming weeks/months,I'm going to be retraining the keyboard playing part of my brain, and will hopefully get up to a decent ability soon.
It's nice to have a keyboard to play on!

Only time will tell whether it's any use to me!!

Bits

ALChoon : MicroKEY Air Test
All velocities have been reset, and Gadget's quantiser has neatened up my unskilled timings!!

Another new Gadget has appeared.
KORG Mono/Poly has way more dials and knobs than I'd ever begin to understand!!
The app plugs into Gadget under the name Montpellier, so AL's test CHOON is aptly named.